


Post-It Notes

by Hiraeth (MoroiiAngel)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Companion Piece, F/M, Inspired By Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:43:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4868831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoroiiAngel/pseuds/Hiraeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Doctor makes the rounds to drop his friends back at their homes at Journey's End, Rose takes a small detour towards her old bedroom and finds a surprise waiting there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gallifreyburning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/gifts).



> This little drabble was inspired by a beautiful idea Gallifreyburning had, and so I gift this to her. [She came up with the idea of post it notes](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/post/23194204004/the-doctor-writes-the-first-note-two-days-after-he) and you should go read her drabble before you read this one. Please.

After all of the running, she nearly thought she wouldn’t be able to see it.  But something in her wanted to see it again.  She had constantly wondered if he would leave it be; whether it was as she left it, or in some horrible state of disarray, or, possibly, gone.  The idea that it could be gone, that he or the Tardis might get rid of it - she didn’t want to believe it.  So she needed to see it.   
  
They had just landed, and Martha and Jack had stepped out the front door, the Doctor following them.  Rose, Mickey, The - the clone, Donna and her Mum sat for a moment in silence.  They were the last.  The Doctor seemed completely confident that he could get them back to the other universe.  In fact, Donna and the other one, the Doctor in blue, had nodded in agreement, babbling things together that Rose could not quite keep up with.  It worried Rose, the way Donna was keeping up with him.  She hadn’t been like that before, when she met her in the alternate dimension.  

Suddenly, Mickey stood up straight.  “Jacks,” he said, turning to Rose’s mum, “I’m going to stay.”  

“What?” Jackie and The Blue Doctor said at once, and then suddenly they and Donna were pestering him with questions.  Mickey looked through them, though, at Rose.  She met his gaze, smiled.  Nodded firmly, then held out her arms.  Mickey came round to her to give her a big hug.  

“I’m going to miss you, Mickey,” she told him sincerely.  He gave her a look that suggested maybe he knew more about it than her.  

“Nah, you’ll be going full tilt without me.”  He said, and then Jackie was pulling on his arm, asking more questions.  The D- she was still struggling with the idea, she knew he was essentially the same, it’d been briefly explained, but still.  He was explaining now, quite serious faced, how it would be impossible to get back if he didn’t come now.  Rose felt her eyes sting.  She needed to get away from this before she made the horrible mistake of asking him to stay with her.  She had promised herself long ago that she wouldn’t do that to him ever again. Instead, she turned and walked out of the console room.

The pathway seemed to her to be exactly the same.  She knew as well as anyone that the Tardis changed all the time, and yet here was the hallway to her bedroom exactly as she remembered it.  But, up ahead, there was something in place of her door.  It looked like a yellow shag carpet had taken up residence in the doorframe to her room.  She moved closer and it began to resolve into many, many little pieces of paper.  

Rose’s eyebrows furrowed as she stopped directly in front of the mass of little papers.  Post-it notes.  What on earth was this all about?  She reached forward and plucked one randomly from the front of the door.  

 _Ate chips today, felt guilty you weren’t there to share_ , it said.  Rose stared at it without comprehending for a moment.  As though it understood before her, her hand began to shake.  Her breath was caught in her chest as she finally took her eyes from it and looked up at the door again.  

 _You’d never guess I’d still be running towards blondes_ , another said  _The roses did not smell like you_ , and  _Still thinking of you,_ and  _I had another dream of you_ , and another simply  _Joan - I’m sorry_.  There seemed to be an unending number of them, somehow hundreds in layers on the door, and she began plucking them like flower petals, reading them and then plucking another, surrounding herself with their discarded bodies as though scattering them at a bride’s feet.  

She was completely unaware of when the tears started flowing, but soon it became difficult to read through them.  She sank to the Tardis floor, clutching one she’d found, one that said  _I don’t know if this is ever going to stop_  in a hurried scrawl that suggested he’d written as fast as possible in case he lost his nerve.  She sat there quietly sobbing for a few moments before she heard a voice echo down the corridor.

“Rose?” His voice jolted her and sent a feeling of being caught with her hand in the cookie jar through her.  She turned her head back and forth, looking at the wreckage of the scene, but before she could do anything she heard his footsteps enter the hallway and come to an abrupt stop. Inexplicable shame kept her from looking up.

“Ah, I, er, well.” He stumbled through his words, obviously trying to find any.  “I wrote them, sometimes, when I was thinking of you.  When something reminded me of you.  Which was… often.”  As he spoke, his footsteps came closer, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up just yet.  “I missed you every day, Rose.  This, this sort of helped.  I couldn’t talk to you.  It was the best I could do.”  He stood beside her, and she could see his plimsolls.  And then, his hand.  “C’mon, Rose.”  She took his hand, let herself be brought to her feet.  He put his arms around her, and rested his lips on her hair.  She hadn’t really stopped crying, only slowed, but it caught up again in earnest; her face pressed against his suit jacket, his hand running up and down her back, his own shaking breaths heavy in her ear.  Finally, she was able to pull back.  Running a hand across her eyes, she smiled up at his face.

“’S really beautiful,” she told him.  “I missed you too.”

And his smile came back, brilliant as she remembered it.  “Together now, aren’t we?  Well then, Rose Tyler, why don’t you go inside and wash your face, then head back to the console room.  One last stop.”  And the way he said it nearly sounded as though he thought they’d be together even after that stop.  She dared not let her hope rise, but she nodded, and pulled away, turning to finally open the door to her bedroom.  She did, and heard his footsteps retreating back down the hall.  Rose turned her head to watch him go, and it wasn’t until she did that she noticed his suit was blue.  


	2. Messages

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8 months after I wrote Post-its, tumblr's ten-and-a-rose requested a follow up piece that took place after Journey's End.

He said goodbye to Wilf, and went back to his TARDIS. _Just breathe,_ he kept reminding himself as he launched himself into the time stream towards the vortex. He was soaking and took off his suit coat. _I’m fine_ , he had told Wilf, but it wasn’t true. Walking around the console, trying to make himself move towards his room and dryness, his fingers toggled some settings and brushed along the circular engine. He looked to it thinking, _at least there is always this_ , when his eyes landed on a little yellow piece of paper. 

What had he been thinking.

No scratch that thought, bad thought, shake it off, he told himself. Instead of chasing the thought down, he grabbed for the post-it note stack closest to him, reaching around the console for the pen pot. _I hope you are happy_ , the Doctor wrote, and then stared at it. He frowned. 

The post-it note was crumpled in his fingers, tossed over his shoulder. _You will be happy together_ , he tried again, and that one too went over his shoulder. _He is better for you. He will age, with you. He can tell you. I would not be good enough. I don’t deserve you._ All of these he threw over his shoulder, frustrated. They were true, but not what he wanted to say. They were not what he was really feeling. Since when did he feel the need to lie to a post-it note no one would ever see?!

Finally, he stood at the console looking down at a post-it note that was blank. He stared down at it. That seemed appropriate, he thought. Blank was all he could allow himself to feel without the dam breaking. It felt honest. Empty. Emptiness without her. 

He walked himself down the hall, finding the door looking untouched. This did not surprise him; after all, he had no idea it had ever been touched by anyone aside from himself. This new note was just another layer in the scaly paper beast that was her bedroom door. 

Over the next several months, a few more blank notes added themselves to the door. Their bland yellow emptiness spoke more than any words he could conjure up. The words did not really matter anymore, anyway. It was the action. Taking a post-it, walking the corridors, pressing it down, running his fingers repeatedly across the top to make sure it stayed. That in itself was a message. I’m thinking of you did not need to be written. It was inherent in the act. I miss you was invisible on every paper. No words existed to express her lack.

He went places just to be able to come back and press a new note to the surface of her door. New planet today, he did not write. No hand to hold. The dogs all had noses. Met someone who was nothing like you. Never said “Run” to anyone. 

When he landed in Victorian London, he immediately thought of her. Her in the shoulderless dress, Dickens and aliens. But no, that was 18 years from now, countless years ago. Then he met Jackson Lake and Rosita. He had smiled, chuckled, said “Good name,” and left it there, because that had seemed like a horrible cosmic joke. But when he went back to the TARDIS, he wrote their names down on a post-it note and stuck it to her door. 

Other names followed. He did not record details, only names, and soon the names created an entire layer over the emptiness. The emptiness was still there; only covered. 

And then he went to Mars. 

There was no time before he went to visit the Ood to write anyone’s names down, and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to. Writing them down seemed an admission of guilt rather than a remembrance. After the Ood, events unravelled so quickly that he never spared a thought for the post-it notes, let alone wrote on any.

It wasn’t until he was standing in the estate listening to her wish her mother a happy new year that he realised he hadn’t recorded it. That her door stood missing vital pieces of information, pieces that he would have never been able to hide from her if she had been there. He wanted to take her hand and spill his guts, seek absolution. It had to be enough just to see her, one last time. After they exchanged their few words, the Doctor stumbled back to the Tardis full of regret, and guilt. Regret for losing her, guilt for losing her, guilt for regretting losing her, regretting all the empty notes and wasted potential. Even though he wished there was more time, he knew there was none left. Knowing didn’t change how he felt, however. He didn’t want to go.

But he did go, violently. More violently than he could ever remember doing before. He burned and the Tardis burned around him, and he flew through spacetime in a wreck, literally bouncing for the regeneration energy flowing through him. 

*****

Five minutes, he promised, and then leapt back into the Tardis. There were still little fires, water in places where there should be no water, books floating past as he waded over to the console. The console had raised itself up significantly, attempting to be above the water line. He reached the controls and navigated himself away from his crash site to prevent further damage to his beautiful ship. That done he leaned against the pillar, an exhilarated smile on his face. A smile which was wiped clean as something small and yellow floated past him in the water.

“No,” he whispered at it. “No, no, no!” He launched himself back into the water, which was draining now that the Tardis was stabilizing. He slogged up the corridor that led to her room. Even as his ship was changing, he still knew the way. He had walked it so many times it seemed impossible that he could not know it. The closer he got, the more notes floated past, many with burn marks. He finally made it to the space where her door should be to find a sodden mass of paper, ink made illegible by fire and water. The Doctor stared at it blankly, unable to react appropriately to this loss. He knew that the Tardis was reconfiguring. The pool going through the library was going to cause some understandable damage. He had simply failed to remember that the library (with their favourite couch) was in the same corridor as Rose Tyler’s room. 

That wasn’t quite true. He had not forgotten. It just hadn’t occurred to him.

Was this who he was now? A man who could move on? 

The thought was accompanied with such a rush of guilt that he knew immediately it was not true. He turned and bolted with his new legs back towards the console room. Things out here were already dry, his beloved Tardis working hard to fix things. It was also remarkably orange all of a sudden, but he didn’t give himself time to think about it. He threw himself at the console and rummaged in the new spaces and drawers until he found a small stack of post-its (which had inexplicably turned from yellow to green). Snatching up a pen he scribbled, _Sorry about the notes, but don’t you worry, I’ll keep writing them, I’ll never stop, but right now I’m late to pick up Amelia Pond, you’d like her, but off I go for now_. That was alarmingly wordy compared to previous notes, but never mind. He jogged back to her door, only a few yellow post-its stuck to it now, and smacked this new one on with vigor.

“Rose Tyler,” he told the door, and it sounded different but the same in his new voice. “Run!” He cracked a manic grin, and then flew back down to the console room, setting coordinates for Amelia Pond’s garden and his next adventure.


End file.
